"We could! I'll see Dr. Custer, and he'll tell me he can help, I _know_
he will. I won't _need_ the Study Center any more, or any other place,
or anybody but you."
He didn't answer, and I knew there wasn't anything he could answer. Not
then.
* * * * *
_Friday, 26 May._ Yesterday we went to Boston to see Dr. Custer, and now
it looks as if it's all over. Now even I can't pretend that there's
anything more to be done.
Next week Aarons will come down, and I'll go to work with him just the
way he has it planned. He thinks we have three years of work ahead of us
before anything can be published, before he can really be sure we have
brought a latent into full use of his psi potential. Maybe so, I don't
know. Maybe in three years I'll find some way to make myself care one
way or the other. But I'll do it, anyway, because there's nothing else
to do.
There was no anatomical defect--Dr. Custer was right about that. The
eyes are perfect, beautiful gray eyes, he says, and the optic nerves and
auditory nerves are perfectly functional. The defect isn't there. It's
deeper. Too deep ever to change it.
_What you no longer use, you lose_, was what he said, apologizing
because he couldn't explain it any better. It's like a price tag,
perhaps. Long ago, before I knew anything at all, the psi was so strong
it started compensating, bringing in more and more from _other_
minds--such a wealth of rich, clear, interpreted visual and auditory
impressions that there was never any need for my own. And because of
that, certain hookups never got hooked up. That's only a theory, of
course, but there isn't any other way to explain it.
But am I wrong to hate it? More than anything else in the world I want
to _see_ Lambertson, _see_ him smile and light his pipe, _hear_ him
laugh. I want to know what color _really_ is, what music _really_ sounds
like unfiltered through somebody else's ears.
I want to see a sunset, just once. Just once I want to see that mother
duck take her ducklings down to the water. But I never will. Instead, I
see and hear things nobody else can, and the fact that I am stone blind
and stone deaf shouldn't make any difference. After all, I've always
been that way.
Maybe next week I'll ask Aarons what he thinks about it. It should be
interesting to hear what he says.